Rocco Fazzari

Water cameos

Exhibition dates: Wed 3 to Sat 20 October, 2007
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Water Cameos is a phrase used by real estate agents to entice a good turnout for property that may command no more than a slice of the sea's horizon. Nevertheless, when we head out to surf or dive we try to read something about the conditions in the colour and texture of those glimpses.

Suddenly the great ocean reveals itself, flat, storming, or gently swilling; glittering or grey. And here is the essence of Sydney's Eastern Suburbs. The march of mildly complicated domestic geometry - stacked on hills, reaching into gullies - will always end on a wilderness of water that stretches to South America.

It ends sometimes on cliffs, where the geometry is extended downward in fractured, tumbled and bitten forms. It makes its last stand at the margins of a beach, just back from a promenade and sometimes a kind of intertidal crescent of grass and trees.

Rocco Fazzari has been working along these margins; and of course he has been working on the intersection of abstract composition and evocation of place. I would enjoy the tonalities, the physicality of the paint itself, and the abstract music of walls and roofs, even if no familiar prospect presented itself; but we all recognize these places.

Here is the downward vista of Bronte Road, the sea's horizon far above it. Walls and roof planes are stacked against it, and it is broken by poles and reaching trees. Down there a bus is turning up around the bend. I know that just beyond the bus the beach and cliffs will be revealed, and then I will know exactly what the waves are doing.

These are pictures that sing with a mild but deep charm.

Pictures which also hint at deep channels beneath the swells that lift against the cliffs of Dover Heights. Pictures in which you can feel the never ending surge of foam. Spray-laden air filters some scenes, even when the sea itself is hidden.

The sea is always there.

John Clare

Born 1960
Graduate of the South Australian School of Art 1978-1981
Lived and worked in Adelaide till 1983
1983-1988 Lived and worked in Canberra
1988-Lives and works in Sydney
Illustrated work has appeared in the Canberra Times, Rolling Stone Magazine, American Sports Illustrated. Drawings regularly appear daily in The Sydney Morning Herald, and regularly in The Age and The Diplomat among many others

Exhibitions

2007Damien Minton Gallery, Sydney
2006Art on the Rocks
2005Global Gallery
2005Artists on Norton, Parliament House of NSW
2005Waverley Art Prize
2004Art on The Rocks, ASN Gallery, Sydney
2004One of Show, New Contemporaries, Sydney
2004Illos, New Contemporaries, Sydney, co-curator
2004Waverley Art Prize
2001Leadership Material, Customs House, Sydney
1993One Man Drawing Show, Gallery Cafe, Sydney
1986The Op Ed Show, Giles Street Gallery, Canberra
1983South Australian Illustrators'83, SA Royal Institute
       of the Arts
198112 from 81, Graduate Exhibition, Centre Gallery,
       Adelaide

Awards

2006Art of the Rocks , short listed
2005City of Whyalla Art Prize, short listed
2005Waverley Art Prize, First Prize, open category
2005Artists on Norton, short listed
2004Art On The Rocks, short listed
2004Waverley Art Prize, Highly Commended, drawing
1993Golden Quill, Law Society of NSW, drawing award,
       First Prize
1989Golden Gavel, Law Society of NSW, drawing award,
       First Prize
1983Andrew & Lillian Pedersen Memorial Prize for Drawing
       and Printmaking, short listed

Bibliography

2005The Big Picture, 175 years of the Sydney Morning
       Herald
2004The Artist behind the Illustrator, www.smh.com.au
2004Illos, The Art of Contemporary Illustration, exhibition
       catalogue
2003Sydney and the Italian Touch, edited by Gino Minoliterno
       & Roberto Pettini
1991La Nouva Generazione, La Regione Emigrazione (Italy)

Collections

Waverley City Council; Italian Cultural Institute, Sydney; National Library of Australia, National Museum of Australia